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A trio of astrophysicists, two from Princeton, the other from New York University, calculated estimates of how soon the universe could collapse if theories of dark energy as quintessence were correct. In their document published in Notices of the National Academy of SciencesKozmin Andrei, Anna Ijas and Paul Steinhardt suggest that it could happen in 100 million years.
Over the past few decades, researchers have found evidence of the expansion of the universe – distant objects are moving further and further away from each other over time. Albert Einstein predicts that this will be the case, and suggests that the force that drives everything in the universe is something called dark energy. He also suggested that his power was constant, which would mean that the universe would expand forever. Since then, others have suggested that dark energy, if it really exists, may not be a constant after all. And if that were the case, maybe one day the universe will slow down and maybe even stop expanding and / or reversing, allowing the universe to shrink until it is smoothed together. Proponents of such a theory describe dark energy as having a dynamic field, which they call quintessence, a property that would allow the universe to expand or contract. And by studying the evidence gathered for the known universe, they found that the theory is as strong as the one that offers dark energy as a constant.
In this new effort, the research trio wondered how long it could take the universe to slow down, stop, shrink, and eventually reach a point if dark energy has a quintessence. To imagine such an idea, they built a model of the universe – one that uses actual data describing the characteristics of the known universe. He showed them that if the idea of quintessence was correct, then the universe could already be slowing down. He also showed that it could slow down to stagnation after approximately 65 million years – and could begin to shrink immediately after 100 million years. A theory such as the one that assumes that dark energy is a constant cannot be proven because there is no way to test it. Astrophysicists must rely on signals coming from light years away, which suggests that if the universe is currently shrinking, we will not be able to measure it for millions of years.
New study casts doubt on the composition of 70 percent of our universe More information: Cosmin Andrei et al, Rapidly descending dark energy and the end of space expansion, Notices of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073 / pnas.2200539119
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